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Motherhood Publications

Motherhood in Literature and Culture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Europe

Motherhood remains a complex and contested issue in feminist research as well as public discussion. This interdisciplinary volume explores cultural representations of motherhood in various contemporary European contexts, including France, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and the UK, and considers how such representations affect the ways in which different individuals and groups negotiate motherhood as both institution and lived experience. It has a particular focus on literature, but ialso includes essays that examine representations of motherhood in philosophy, art, social policy, and film. The book's driving contention is that, through intersecting with other fields and disciplines, literature and culture, and the study of literature and culture, have an important role to play in nuancing dialogues around motherhood, by offering challenging insights and imaginative responses to complex problems and experiences. This is demonstrated throughout the volume, which covers a range of topics including: discursive and visual depictions of pregnancy and birth; the impact of new reproductive technologies on changing family configurations; the relationship between motherhood and citizenship; the shaping of policy imperatives regarding mothering and disability; and the difficult realities of miscarriage, child death, violence, and infanticide. The collection expands and complicates hegemonic notions of motherhood, as the authors map and analyse shifting conceptions of maternal subjectivity and embodiment, explore some of the constraining and/or enabling contexts in which mothering takes place, and ask searching questions about what it means to be a ‘mother’ in Europe today. It will be of interest not only to those working in gender, women's and feminist studies, but also to scholars in literary and cultural studies, and those researching in sociology, criminology, politics, psychology, medical ethics, midwifery, and related fields.

A small cluster of articles drawn from the third workshop of the Motherhood in Post-1968 European Literature Network – Changing Models of Motherhood – is published in the online, peer-reviewed journal, Studies in the Maternal 5.2 (2013).

The cluster comprises: Browne, Victoria: ‘Oedipus Interrupted: Introduction to a special cluster on “Changing Models of Motherhood”’; Lee Six, Abigail: ‘Changing Models of Motherhood? Hideous Progeny and Mother-Blame in Ana García-Siñeriz, Esas mujeres rubias (2011) [Those Blonde Women]’; Carlshamre, Katarina, ‘Helper and Obstacle: The Image of the Father in Four Swedish Mother-Narrated Novels of the Early 21st Century: Myrén, Nordin, Sandberg and Sveland’. Also, appearing in the same issue is Cain, Ruth: ‘“This growing genetic disaster”: Obesogenic Mothers, the Obesity “Epidemic” and the Persistence of Eugenics’, based on her paper presented at the Network’s conference in October 2013.

A special section of Women’s Studies International Forum 52 (September-October 2015) has been published, entitled ‘Mothering and Migration: Interdisciplinary Dialogues, European Perspectives and International Contexts’, edited by Anastasia Christou (Middlesex), Adalgisa Giorgio (Bath) and Gill Rye (IMLR). The contributions are partly drawn from the fourth workshop of the Motherhood in post-1968 European Literature Network on ‘Mothering and Migration’, held on 26 April 2013.

A special issue of Religion and Gender 6.1 (2016) has been published, entitled Motherhood, Religions and Spirituality, edited by Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor (Coventry) and Gill Rye (IMLR). The contents are partly drawn from the fifth workshop of the funded 'Motherhood in post-1968 European Literature' Network on 'Motherhood, Religions and Spirituality', held on 28 June 2013. The Contents are available on open-access at https://www.religionandgender.org/578/volume/6/issue/1/.

A special section, entitled Mothering and Work in Italy in the Twenty-First Century: Culture and Society,edited by Adalgisa Giorgio (Bath), has been published in the Journal of Romance Studies 15.3 (2016). The contents are partly drawn from the second workshop of the AHRC-funded 'Motherhood in post-1968 European Literature' Network on 'Mothering and Work: Employment Trends and Rights', held on 26 October 2012.